“The one Sestos, the other Abydos hight.”
-Marlowe
Epigraph: quote from “Hero and Leander” by Christopher Marlowe, a sixteenth century poet and dramatist. The Byzantine legend tells of Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, and Leander, the man who falls in love with her. They live on opposite sides of the straight of Dardanelles in the towns of Sestos and Abydos, respectively. Every night Leander would swim across the straight guided by a lantern she would light for him. One night, a terrible storm blew out Hero’s light and Leander drowned while trying to cross the straight. When Hero found out about her lover’s death she killed herself.
Line 2: “wraith” – the apparition of a person who is supposed to be alive, but appears around the time of his or her death.
Line 3: “Southern Cross” – referring to the Ku Klux Klan’s signature cross burning. Often referred to by Klan members as “cross-lighting”, the supposed reason for the burning is to express faith in Christ.
Line 4: “girdles” – “A belt worn round the waist to secure or confine the garments; also employed as a means of carrying light articles, esp. a weapon or purse” (OED).
Spirella Catalogue (1933). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Line 8: “vaporous scars” – A possible reference to physical scars endured by African American during slavery.
Line 9: “Eve!” – African American woman of the south.
“Magdalene!” – She appears in the New Testament as a disciple of Jesus and a candid prostitute, but is embodies in “National Winter Garden” “a sleazy dancer who is seen as the priestess of love” (Willingham 65).
Line 10: “Mary” – virginal office worker.
Line 12: “O simian Venus” – “Venus was a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths” (Wikipedia). Venus means “sexual desire” in Latin.
Simian refers to a monkey or ape.
Line 16: “phosphor” – any substance that exhorts a luminescence when light crosses that substance at a particular wavelength.
Line 18: “trailed derision!” – to drag along a mockery.
Line 22: “embers of the Cross” – the smoldering remains of the Cross (probably wood).
Line 28: “Insolence” – to have outright rude and disrespectful behavior.
Line 33: “lithic” – made of stone.